Back to the Land

The collective lowing of my parents,
the bed by the privet border has gone back to the land.

Rustic, I say, post-patronising, pre-earnest,
as unmoored as mother, or father,
by the edge of the garden, the exurbs a call
and a defeat by land that is not for their pleasure,
or mine.

Summoned beyond the basil, kitchen window yellowed,
and the greenfly smudges,
they scoop, shovel, reserve and mulch,
the border unspoken, and as are they as tenders,
to this pruned, quiet dream of never quite getting this way,
nor going back to that.